Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1887-11-05

We may lose heaven by neutrality as
as well as by hostility by wanting oil as
well as by drinking poison. An unproft-
able servant shall as much be punished as
prodigal son. Undone duty will undo
our souls.-Rer. 4. L. Guss.
have seen beneath the microscope
seed 5000 years old start into instant ger
mination when touched with drop of
warm water. So human soul long appa-
rently lifeless begins to grow when touched
by the water of life.-Canon WilbeJorcc.
Opportunity is one of heavens divinest
gifts. But all human situations afford di-
vine opportunities. The places where we
are are places appointed for us by infinite
wisdom. The work at our hands is work
we hold the commission of heaven.-Dr
Burdet Hart.
Always try to be good and to do what is
right, rather than what happens to be
pleasant, for in the end, whatever sneering
people may say, what is good and what is
happy are the same. Be unselfsh, and
whenever you can lend a helping hand to
others-for the world is full of suffering,
and to alleviate it is the noblest end that
we can set before us. If you do that, You
will become a sweet and God-fearing
woman, and make many peoples lives
little brighter; and then you will not
have lived, as many Of your sex do, in
vain.-Haggard, in Allan QIarterman.
Think of the distance expressed by 400
| times the distance of the milky way of
Andromede-500,000 of years, as flies the
| light Alas, how feeble are our powers
how they bow under such mighty num-
bers-such gates of GAIA What won
drous chronometers could take fitting
account Of the ongoings of such far off
ornaments Could you stand with wand
in your hand reaching to that remote
galaxy, and sweep it !around in every
direction, what an empire fit for Jeho-
yah would face within the embrace of
these glorious circles And yet who shall
say that even this is the whole astronomi-
cal universe? What right have we to stop
just where the power of our instruments
happens for the moment to have stopped
and say: This is the end Turn back,
0 venturous explorer-nothing but night
and void in that direction. Thou hast
reached the last outpost of the kingdom
of the Eternalw No; thrice no. On still
through peopled infnitude, through rain
ing galaxies and tornado-nebule; and
while thou goest outward still through the
charging storming hosts Of suns, as long as
thought can fly or angels live, say ever to
myself: 10, these are parts of his ways;
but how little portion is heard of him. -
From Eceo Cnllm.
DUTY THE FOUNDATION OF RELIGION.
What, then, is the very foundation of
| religion, in the largest sense of the word.
and as distinguished from the various svs-
| TENS in which it has found more or less
adequate expression? l conceive that
foundation to be unquestionably the sense
of ethical obligation. Nor is it difficult
to see why this is so. The special attri-
| butte of man, Aristotle tells us in the
Politics." is that he is a moral being. en-
joying perception of good and evil, Justice
and injustice, and the like. 1t is this, he
considers, which marks man off from the
| rest of animated nature. For N.Y.
self, indeed, l cannot deny the rudi-
ments, at least of the moral
| sense to creatures inferior to man in
the scale of being. l believe, with Profess
sor Huxley, that 'even the highest facul-
ties of feeling and intellect begin to germi-
nate i'll lower forms of life" But, however
that may be, certain it is, as Jean Paul
Richter writes, that Gin the higher nature
of every fully endowed man there is an in
stinct Of obligation or sense of response
bility." And this instinct or sense is the
first thing about u.s. Nothing is more
sure to me-" said Plato, ethan that / ought
to be as good and noble as | can" In the
bdundless immensely of our ignorance this
is clear, though all else be doubtful.
Put aside, prescind from, all theo-
ries of life offered US, whether by
religion or by philosophy, and yet
this primary fact remains, that
l possess the power of willing good as good
and the consciousness that | ought to will
it. Life, then, whatever else it is or is not.
is period of moral probation. That is
| the most certain of all our certitudes. And
| upon that foundation must we build if we
would know what IS the object of life, or,
as the old philosophers call it, the " sum
mum bonum." Thus, Aristotle holds in
| his Ethics that the chief good of man
consists in an activity of the soul in accord
ance with its excellence; that is, as he SAYS
in another place, with virtue. Or, to trans
late his dictum into the language of an
even nobler philosophy, the end of life
is to bring the individual will into har-
mony with the universal WILL to follow
the dictates of that eternal monitor which
says, "Thou oughtest." Religion accounts
that internal monitor divine. Its essence,
as Kant sums the matter up, lies in the
recognition Of our duties as Gods com
mands; in its proclamation of the abso-
lutely binding nature of the moral law.
This is what Christianity means when it
declares the end of man to be the doing
of Gods will. ooh, my God, l am con-
tent 30 do it; yea, thy law is within my
heart" are the words put by St. Paul into
the mouth of Jesus Christ; and they APP
ply, in their degree, to all his disciples
w S Him In lie Enrn1n for Nnre,nher